Stuff and Sacraments - New Evangelizers

Let’s look at some miracles.

First, God thought matter into existence. That is, some of his immaterial love is so dense that it actually manifests itself as stuff. You know: fermions, gluons, bosons, all the impossibly tiny little grains of love that everything else is composed of.  Then he thought the stuff into things such as our bodies. Isn’t that miraculous? I think it is. And until the Fall, it was all good, being ultimately made of love.

But we sinners have made a mess of it, and now know God at a remove. Still, God helps us and communicates to us, often through physical bits. F’rinstance after the Flood, God used a rainbow to communicate something important to Noah’s family…ehh…I forgot what it was.

Regardless, God later mediated his power through Moses’ and Aaron’s staffs.  They whacked the Nile, canals, the Red Sea and rocks with miraculous results.

Israelites crossed the Jordan on dry ground due to the power in the Ark of the Covenant.

Elijah and Elisha each crossed the Jordan on dry ground by striking it, Moses-like, with a cloak.

At Elisha’s instruction, Naaman the pagan leper was cured by bathing in the Jordan.

After Elisha passed away, a dead man hastily thrown onto Elisha’s earthly remains was restored to life.

But miracles aren’t just an Old Testament Thing. God kicked off the New Testament by putting a star in the sky…something to do with Jesus.

Jesus worked miracles too, often fixing not just physical problems, but spiritual ones, “healing the sin-sick soul” as the song says. And he worked these miracles through his physical nature, living stuff face-to-face with the afflicted or an intercessor.

Sometimes Jesus didn’t even need to be directly involved, but simply physically available, like a cloak or a bone. Recall that the woman with a hemorrhage barely managed to grab the trailing tassel of Jesus’ prayer shawl. Jesus said, “Who was it that touched me?” When all denied it, Peter said, “Master, the multitudes surround you and press upon you!” But Jesus said, “Someone touched me; for I perceive that power has gone forth from me.” Just plug into the Holy Battery, get a nice jolt. It does it by itself.

But miracles aren’t just a Jesus Thing, either. After the Ascension, Paul and Peter could also heal without being directly involved. Peter’s shadow could heal as it fell on someone. And “God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them.”

Sticks, bones, water, aprons, cloaks, people, the common stuff of the world; none of them magic, all of them sacramental. God has related to the world sacramentally since the Fall, and there is no expectation in the Bible that he’ll stop until the Second Coming. Miracles aren’t just a Bible Thing. So think of the sacraments as Jesus-supercharged miracles in which divine power still flows through bits and pieces of love older than Creation itself.

Think big. Think Catholic.

Copyright 2014, Christian LeBlanc

Image by storebukkebruse via Flickr.

Christian LeBlanc

Christian LeBlanc is a revert whose pre-Vatican II childhood was spent in South Louisiana, where he marinated in a Catholic universe and acquired a Catholic imagination. During his middle school years in South Carolina, Christian was catechized under the benevolent dictatorship of Sister Mary Alphonsus, who frequently admonished him using the nickname "Little Pagan." After four years of teaching Adult Ed and RCIA, he returned to Sr. Alphonsus' old classroom to teach Catechism himself. Married to Janet, the LeBlancs have five children and two grandsons. Christian and Janet belong to St. Mary's Parish in Greenville, South Carolina. Christian also posts at Amazing Catechists and his blog, Smaller Manhattans. He is the author of The Bible Tells Me So: A Year of Catechizing Directly from Scripture.